AFL-CIO changes policy on immigrants

By Fred Gaboury

NEW ORLEANS - In a dramatic change of policy, the AFL-CIO Executive Council, at its Feb. 15-17 meeting here, adopted a resolution calling for an amnesty for the nation's undocumented immigrant workers and their families.

The resolution said immigrant workers have made and continue to make "enormous contributions to their communities and workplaces" and called for a "restructuring" of immigration policy to protect workplace rights and freedoms and hold employers accountable for violations of labor, environmental and safety laws.

"With this resolution the AFL-CIO proudly stands with immigrant workers and their struggles," John Wilhelm, president of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union, told reporters. "The present system is broken and needs fixing."

Wilhelm chaired the council's Committee on Immigration Policy that recommended the changes. "We, the labor movement, have to put ourselves in a leadership position on immigrant rights," said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers.

Wilhelm said the change in AFL-CIO policy reflects "substantial changes in the real world. The picture of immigrant workers is substantially different today than it was in 1985."

The number of immigrant workers living in this country is greater than at any time since the first decades of the 20th century, Wilhelm said, noting that at least 80 percent of all immigrants have proper documents.

Wilhelm pointed to the role played by immigrants in organizing workers in the mass production industries during the 1930s. "That is what gave us the modern labor movement," he said.

A quarter of new entrants in the labor market are immigrants, who now make up a substantial proportion of workers on farms and in industries such as hotels, construction, health care and meat packing. Labor leaders charge that unscrupulous employers often fight off unionization drives by threatening to fire union supporters who are "illegal" immigrants or by calling immigration officials to deport them.

A case in point was the recent action by the manager of a Holiday Inn in Minneapolis who called the Immigration and Naturalization Service after a campaign led by undocumented workers succeeded in organizing the hotel's work force. Eight workers, including several single mothers, were arrested and are facing deportation.

The federation's resolution calls for tough sanctions against any company that uses advertisements or recruiters in other countries to encourage illegal immigrants to come to the United States to work for them.

In support of this measure, the United Food and Commercial Workers distributed copies of a want ad, placed in a Juarez, Mexico newspaper in on behalf of a chicken-processing plant in Tennessee.

The labor federation opposed proposals to expand guest worker programs in which tens of thousands of foreigners are allowed temporarily into the United States to work. Wilhelm said the best way to deal with any shortage of workers would be to expand job-training programs. The resolution also calls for creation of education programs and training centers to educate workers about immigration issues and assist workers in exercising their rights and freedoms.

The AFL-CIO has scheduled four regional forums with immigrant workers together with labor and community leaders to discuss issues of immigration and immigrant workers in New York April 1, Atlanta April 29, Los Angeles May 20 and Minneapolis on a yet undetermined date.